Ask HN: 90s kids happily less connected? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: 90s kids happily less connected?

65 pointsconformist54 comments

I was born in the 90s. My impression is that folks in my generation are increasingly leaving or ignoring social networks and, after roughly a decade, have concluded that they aren’t helpful or interesting to them as a concept (perhaps outside of special domains such as professional networks or dating). They still stay in touch with groups of friends via messenger apps. Do you share this observation? How universal is it? How has it come about?

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I'm not observing this at all. Most of my Millennial family and friends are on Instagram, regularly posting Stories about their family or travel. Many 30-year-olds+ are as hooked on short-form content (TikTok, YouTube shorts, Reels etc.) as the younger generation, but the latter are more likely to contribute rather than passively consume.

Messenger apps are very popular, with WhatsApp still being the number one choice.

I don't know anyone outside of tech who regularly posts on Twitter. Most ignore it completely.

The only thing I would add is that I find the only people using whatsapp are grandparents talking to children, not groups with any level of tech savvy...

What country? It's the defacto form of communication in many countries.

Twitter is in this weird schrodingers cat situation where I don't know anyone that uses it, but its brought up as important constantly. Journalists, Celebrities, and Politicians love it, and that made it seem more important. I hope it goes away forever one day.

- 10 years on LinkedIn, benefit: none

- 15 years on Reddit, there are some obscure reddits that are quite informative, but the last 5 years I saw a huge deterioration of the content, benefit: some

- 2 years on TeamBlind, good to know that layoffs are comming, otherwise no benefit

- 4chan, /diy/ made me laugh a few times, overall just waste of time

- FaceBook, never really got it, benefit: negative (annoying emails)

- HN: I would like to write something else, but the sad true is I don't see any benefit from lurking on HN for 10 years.

On the other hand time invested in reading books paid out:

- Reading investing books gave me a better financial security

- Improving my software skills by reading books about architecture etc. resulted in handsome salary increases

- Reading fitness (calisthenics) books - now I can do 10 pushups, when I started I cannot do even a single one.

- Reading in English, now my English skills are enough to get a better paying, english-only job.

Of course I also read a ton of books for pure enjoyment, that did not result in any objective gain. Of course I could watch YT to get into fitness movement, but overall there are too many distractions on YT, that make it hard to dedicate 1h of time to a single subject.

Recently I prefer to join closed, curated and non-googlable communities e.g. a slack channel/FB group for people from the same university/school or a group for people interested in investing (paid) or a club of people interested in retro computing. After seeing toxic/trolling/or just _notice me at any cost_ behaviours I no longer believe in total anonymity. Now I prefer to interact with people that I at least recognize e.g. there is a meetup and associated discord group, you can get invite only by showing up in the meeting.

Reddit has become a one of the more stupid places on the Internet now. I guess it's because of their drive for growth and mobile usage prompts lazy comments.

There are some good niche subs still

Unfortunately I only know of one for my interests and that's because it's sport related so it doesn't need to be "intelligent".

I like your breakdown! Mine is pretty similar

- 10 years LinkedIn, some leads and interviews but no jobs

- ?? years Digg/Reddit: probably just a waste of time (just a lurker)

- Facebook, 13 years, some minor use but barely use it now. My wife uses it a lot more though with mom groups in our city which is nice

- HN: Got a job, and helped me upskill!

- Blind: exposed me to what is possible in the tech industry, 4x'ed my salary so this has certainly been the biggest benefit! Also helped understand the interview process

- Some private slacks: also helped me get in touch with a few insiders who helped me do well at some top company interviews and get offers.

I agree that smaller groups are better, it is just harder to find them!

I'm much older than that, but I have millenial kids and just some days ago we talked about it. They all use social media apps sometimes, but do it for communication (private messages/groups/etc) or for entertainment. They all consider social media in social media sense far too toxic and unhealthy. They all know people using social media actively though and there seems to be two reasons – as part of trying to build a professional brand or inertia. The last group seem rather sad for them and reminds me my experience from my thirties. I think that all of us know people who are stuck in some area in our past and can't understand that the world around them has moved on.

Note that these observations are probably very specific to area and social group.

I notice similar in my case and case of my friends (born between 1985-1990).

I've seen fair share of new services and social networks being branded as "Facebook killer" in last 10 years but for me group texting was the thing that replaced the main use case of Facebook and Instagram - sharing important/funny/interesting moments and stuff with friends and family.

Back in the day I could use IRC or some messengers for this, but Facebook was the first to enable this at scale. Afterwards messaging apps (Viber in case of my country but I guess Telegram/WhatsApp for the rest of the world) made this more convenient but also more intimate/rewarding.

We don't have mutes or bans in our group texts. Discussions, even political ones, don't blow up like on Twitter. There's less incentive for things to go crazy when you're exchaning intersting/important stuff with people you know and care about.

Also, before Facebook I created and administreted phpBB forum for the same group of friends. We were in late teens, early 20s at that point so the main topics were "What are you listening too?", "What are you drinking tonight?", "How was Saturday night for you" (but also topics around literature, comic books, movies, video games). I get similar vibes from our group texts that I had on that forum more than 15 years ago.

Group chats don't scale and are bad for history e.g a time line or photo album.

Might satisfy you but it's a different use case

Im 36, I guess so? I don’t use “social media” at all anymore, but I use Discord a lot. It reminds me of the good ol’ days of AOL and IRC, and I prefer chat rooms over posting into the void.

I find Twitter and such intolerable because it mostly started to feel like I was just a mark for random grifts. At some point around ~2016 everything seemed to turn into a link for Patreon or a podcast or blah blah

> I don’t use “social media” at all anymore

Posted on HN, QED.

I've also quit all social media besides HN. At least I can try and tell myself that HN is more stimulating intellectually, it's my one dirty little digital habit I have left

HN is just a last crutch for me after leaving reddit at this point. I prefer it because upvotes and downvotes are anonymous except for your own when it comes to comments, so there isn’t as much of a dopamine hit after posting when you really think about it.

This kind of pedantry is exactly what keeps me coming back for more!

You better write longer, more informative paragraphs LOL

Do you consider forums "social media"?

I don't consider forums social media. To me, HN is more of a forum.

A social media's primary goal is engagement - to keep you coming back for more, to keep you scrolling. And the content reflects that.

A forum's primary goal is discourse.

Reddit straddles that weird space in between.

Discord sounds like something I would enjoy, I was heavy IRC user back in the day. But I never found an interesting server.

Any recommendations for servers focusing on topics like AI-ML/Python/Math,probability, statistics?

While I don’t personally know any good servers for those topics, https://disboard.org is a good resource for finding new servers that match your interests. Good luck!

Any advice for finding quality Discord servers (things like ideal member count / “red flags” etc)? I feel like I have a lot of trouble finding servers that strike a good balance of being active but not impenetrable.

I don’t have any, other than maybe look in general chat to make sure it’s active. I’ve also struggled with this, often a promising new server is disappointing after I get to know it over a couple days.

It's a mess of malignant attention whores and child predators. The servers that are good inevitably attract the bad types who, when removed, go out of their on way to take the server down. Don't waste your time.

Thanks, I quickly found what I was looking for!

There's a challenge to define the terms in this conversation. Is Facebook social media? I think most people would agree yes. Is Youtube? Is Tiktok? Is WhatsApp?

Social media started off as a place to connect online with your offline social network--your friends and family. Then it became a place where you could meet new people. Finally, it became a place where you could find interesting content... sort of a modern version of "turning on the TV" in the 1980s. (And from the other perspective... a place you could go to build an audience, if you wanted one.)

Today, I would argue that those features have been split up. Messaging apps like WhatsApp, Telegram, iMessage etc. are where people go to stay connected with friends and family. And video apps like Youtube, Tiktok, and (increasingly) Instagram are where people go to be entertained.

Facebook is left in the middle, pushing news, then Groups, now Marketplace to try to keep people coming back. Twitter is also skewing toward 100% entertainment, a trend that Musk is leaning into with his tabloid approach to content management.

Meanwhile, people still call Tiktok and Instagram "social media" even though they don't work like social media websites did 15 years ago. Some folks even call Reddit or HN social media. (I would call them web forums.)

I’ll toss in my two cents as someone born in the mid nineties, and is not very connected by modern standards. I have a Discord, Reddit, HN, YouTube (?) and Steam. I’ve deleted or completely stopped using any other social media accounts.

That being said I can count on one hand the number of people who have a similar level of disconnect. Most people +/- 5 years of me that I know maintain on if not multiple other social media accounts. Mostly Instagram, from my experience.

I think the biggest thing I’ve noticed is that people I talk to are _aware_ of the risks and dangers of engaging with social media. But for some reason or another still choose to do so. But the level of awareness is up quite a bit from where it was half a decade ago.

Technically Whatsapp is also more than a messaging app, as Meta is trying to encroach more and more features inside.

Fuck social media. There are too many people clamoring for attention through manufactured viral outrage and victimhood. Plus, I don't give a shit about someone's lunch, their winter family vacation montage, or random people resharing viral conspiracy theories. Twitter is a cesspool of anonymous, thoughtless, and shallow noise, and Musk's tweets are par for the course.

And fuck viral micro-vlog influencer platforms. If people have life to waste on useless idle consumption rather than production, that's their choice. People with shit to do don't have time to watch crap that doesn't add value.

Also, LinkedIn is a cesspool of annoying, lazy, keyword-matching, slimy, labor pimps. I don't even use a resume anymore because there is little or no meaningful professionalism in the engineering of software or systems and resumes are basically lies. It's how someone works on real problems that matters, not trivial pursuit interview questions or brain teasers. Anyone looking for an easy paycheck can become an unethical, unprofessional, ignorant software developer. When I hear an organization hires people without relevant engineering expertise, I look for the door because it's going to be an amateur-hour shitshow.

But I can tell you who I won't talk about startup ideas with: uncurious, close-minded, complacent, dependent, niche specialists who refuse to realize they are living on borrowed time as employees rather than owners of something else much more valuable. Anyone who goes home and plays video games isn't self-aware enough to realize they are squandering their life assuming their current security will continue. It won't.

I think it is somewhat platform dependent. I don’t know anyone that uses Facebook except for the weird kids I went to high school with or senior citizens. People my age (20s-30s) will occasionally post major life event photos, ie wedding, baby, etc.

Instagram still seems wildly popular especially among women. My wife is definitely addicted.

YouTube will probably have the most longevity because of the breadth of topics on the platform. I can use youtube for anything tutorial/learning related, hobby related content, and also occasionally dive down a random rabbit hole.

Also born in the 90s, I feel like we were the last generation to grow up with technology advanced enough to be useful/educational but not yet so heavily DRM-ed and Ad-optimized as to be effectively manipulative to us as children.

This made the era amazingly fruitful for growing new developers (biased view but this is the orange site); as another piece of anecdata I have a sister who was born just after 2000 and she's plagued by every type of social disorder known to the world.

She's expressed interest in doing things like running a linux OS, but her laptop's secure boot and lack of MBR support meant she had to learn to create an efi partition first! It was tough trying not to flood her with 2 decades of history while letting her explore.

Born late 80s. Stopped using Twitter about 8 years ago. Stopped using Facebook 5 years ago. I still use Instagram, but mainly it’s just stories because I enjoy the ephemeral format and there’s no algorithm or suggested content. I stay in touch with different groups of friends using various messenger apps, mix of DMs and group chats, which is pretty consistent with your experience.

It’s more of an age thing than a generational thing, Once you get in your 30’s, you have had enough real human adult socialization to realize the value of actual relationships vs the fake personas that people generate, curate and filter on social media.

I do not that that will be true for teens growing up today. They seem to be weened on a sort of cyborg I traction model rather than any actual direct human contact.

Interesting, please could you elaborate more precisely?

That's not really what we see though given that while in their late 20s / early 30s many people reconsider their view of social media, the older generation of people in their 50s / 60s use social media more and more and highly value the fake online relationships.

I think for older millennials it’s sort of like moving on to high school and encountering middle schoolers. You get this icky feeling of what you once were. Like geez, you guys are really into that? Yuck.

It’s a form of self loathing. One has to understand that everyone goes through these phases and when you make it out, leave it behind, and don’t judge those in whatever phase of life they are in. As lame as it is, and as much it reminds you of how lame you once were.

I don’t know what’s wrong with all the dick riders on social media. I just accept that it’s a phase ( a long one ) for a lot of people.

Some ppl just don't grow up.

I left Facebook 8 years ago, but have been in and out of sites like Reddit, HN, trash news and the like. I’ve gotten rid of my smartphone on and off a few times.

I’m 27 and as I get older, I become much more cognizant of how I both spend my time and sources of my knowledge consumption.

I’ve since deleted Reddit and primarily only keep in contact with people via iMessage/post cards/phone calls or in person events.

I’ve been actively monitoring energy levels through the weeks and realize that limiting my screen time and sedentary time to 4 hours a day is key. A simple hack I’ve learned to build the habit is:

- Don’t have phone in bedroom at night

- Read the same time every day for 30 minutes minimum

- take pleasure in boredom

- exercise even if you don’t want to (and your body isn’t exhausted from excess exercise). I like to oscillate between activities like surfing, yoga, running and walking to keep exercise always interesting.

If you need some research backed knowledge on easing on the dopamine, check out Dopamine Nation and Deep Work. Both solid books that can help shift your perspective. For people needing more energy in their life, I highly recommend Why We Sleep

I dont really know but Im curious how the generational waves of tech usage/adoption go.

I had kept expressing a hope that youthful observation & youthful rebellion again parents would someday mean kids seeing their parents vacuous screen addictions & pick to do something else for themselves.

My hope wained for a while, but Im starting to think other factors are helping. The sense of emergence as tech developed has all worn off- tech is all the same prepackaged shit, lacking in the niches and exploration it used to have. And it's apparent none of it has our interests at heart (or wont, after the next buy out).

To be clear, I think there are lots of really interesting & open frontiers of tech, but here we are in almost 2023 and we're only kust making oue way out of Walled Gardens/Neomainframes, and it s unclear that we will have a revival of a more personal computing or not, given the complexity & difficulty of connected/online tech. We need paths forwards (and I dont think retropunk nor simple static will have much real enticement, will have sufficient allure).

This may be less about being a 90’s kid and more about getting older and having less time for nonsense.

I would agree. I think it is generally a thing of becoming more "adult". 90s kids very likely were quite into various social medias or proto versions thereof. Work takes more time, then possibly family. Or just generally getting tired with it.

I would expect similar trajectory for 00s in 10 years and 10s in 20 years. And so on.

> have concluded that they aren’t helpful or interesting to them as a concept

Yeah they aren't. This site has a little bit of technical value and debate. Any of the big social networks are full of idiots that I'd rather not deal with

I didn't notice this at all. My close friends are part of my finsta and I am part of theirs. That's two different accounts most maintain. I haven't posted on my instagram in forever but I post a story every once in a while. Most of my friends are the same way. Some of my friends have made their twitter completely professional, but most use it to shit post. Everyone I'm close to uses the 'close friends' feature on instagram, the standard stories are much less frequent.

In certain groups we have shifted to using discord for group messaging, not just a group channel, there's one for meme, new papers, food eaten, tv shows, we even had a world cup and did a group voice call during the finals. I don't know what member count would be considered social media vs . I am in small private ones and also huge, 2000+ people public ones. Arguably my friends are a healthy mix of millenial and gen z kids because I was born on imaginary border between the two. What size should be considered the limit?

I don't think 90s kids are happily less connected. I know friends that take breaks, sometimes for months, but they always come back and generally post holiday stories/posts. I know in the past, my "break" has been just looking at stories like once a week and posting stories but not opening stories.

Born in ‘88. Haven’t had Facebook since 2010; Instagram since 2012; Twitter since 2017. Not on Reddit, only use Discord for voice calls with a couple friends while gaming.

My few friends are more or less the same way, but I’ve felt very isolated from my peers for a long time due to their passive relationship maintenance and growth through social media. All the ways I used to meet new people seem to be ineffective these days. I have developed a Youtube consumption problem and I suspect it’s because it gives me the hit a better social life would.

I hear sentiments like yours every now and then, but I’m sure not seeing a change myself. Most people seem to agree the platforms are bad, but also seem more addicted than ever.

I personally think everyone including 90s kids are just burnt out by social media. It’s too much. The only ones that seem to still engage are teenagers because they are evergreen. That’s probably why Facebook tries to target teenagers.

I was born in the mid-70's, and my social media is fairly limited. I don't appreciate "short form" things, so Twitter and TikTok are more annoyances that I ignore. Facebook is for mostly passive consumption of my real life friends' lives, though my ability to do that depends on whether Facebook decides to go in to "suggestion mode" and fill my feed with 75% suggested content vs. things I follow. Messaging apps are where I'm active with friends and HN and Reddit are where I'm most active with strangers. Beyond that, I really don't see the need.

The last social media "platform" I have heavily used (ignoring HN) was MSN Messenger. Reddit/Twitter/FB/etc. never got my attention somehow, but now I see more and more people leaving them. I guess that must be good.

I still don't understand why WhatsApp (and similars) requires a phone number (from a technical point of view). If someone releases MSN Messenger with a modern UI/UX, I'm in!

Before I completely dismiss social media I would like to “play” the game a second time, from scratch. See if I can create a “better” environment as-in “train the algorithm better” know that I know the surroundings.

Can confirm.

Born in 1992, haven’t been using social media in like 6-7 years.

This is defiantly true in my case.

where are you from?

I just doubt this is true. I like to say and think I have no social media yet here I am. I also spend quite a bit of time watching youtube videos and looking at youtube comments.

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